Production Technology and Job/Employment Issues
Issues include attitudes/alienation, training, industrial relations, redundancy and job loss, the quality of working life and payment systems, social responsibility to the community.
Scientific Management & Job Design
Work study approaches typify what might be termed "scientific management" (after F W Taylor). Taylor recomended an approach to management and use of contolled analysis and planing techniques to achieve specialisation and simplification of working methods and to separate "planning from doing".
Taylor argued that management specialists should control work processes by designing tasks, measuring work, use of target setting, select and training staff systematically and designing payment systems. Use of scientific management methods this century has tended towards over extensive division of labour, job restriction and supervisory control. Too many manufacturing firms have exhibited the worst elements of Taylorism .
Though wide-spread in manufacturing, scientific management approaches too frequently foster authoritarian, separated management using brash (not scientific!) decision-making.
Division of labour fragments work and responsibility, workers hide from accountability, machines become more important than people, control shifts from skilled workers to managers who monopolise knowledge. Scientific management techniques maximise management control over labour but anti-Taylor arguments should not cloud sound, logical application of systematic techniques to achieve efficient production.
De-skilling occurs in manufacturing and services also. Banks, insurance, hotels have similarly fragmented work. Employee discretion (individual and group) is reduced by functional separation, rules and standardised procedures eg standard letters from Bank managers. Imagine the frustration of Queen Victoria and a waitress in a Windsor hotel when at 4.00 p.m. the Queen requests tea for four and one chocolate eclair. Hotel policy (the menu) allows tea to be served singley but if the customer wants a bun then only the "Special high tea" item on the menu at £4.50 is offered.
Employees reaction with disenchantment ("Its not our fault its the stupid manager"), absenteeism, no ownership of quality and increased supervisory costs. Job demarcation is turned against management with anti-organisational sub-cultures emerging . Crozier's study of engineer power in a French tobacco factory illustrates how managers lose control in strict scientific management situations.
Crude scientific management and managerial control treats people as horsepower yet Taylor had enlightened views on training and staff participation.
Job Re-design and Job Entrichment
In the 70's and 80's (following Herzberg ) efforts to counteract negative effects of deskilling: weak job satisfaction and commitment were encouraged. These include improved management skill development, job enrichment, autonomous working groups and participation schemes.
Herzberg recommended job enrichment - re-designing jobs in terms of their meaningfulness, content, responsibility, opportunities of achievement and recognition. Applications were more successful for white collar jobs than blue collar and for groups who seek more responsibility. FMS systems and technological change offers job enrichment as new engineering jobs generally stretch job responsibilities, wholeness and personal development.
Group or Cell Technology had origins in the socio-technical studies of the Tavistock Institute . Essentially a cell or autonomous working group is created with responsibility for a significant stage in an operation. The group manage themselves internally. The cell becomes a factory within a factory. The manager is freed from controlling labour and operates more as a 'boundary manager and facilitator' dealing with problems of the immediate environment.
As responses to deskilling, job enrichment and autonomous working groups have had limited success in remedying problems of absenteeism, high turnover, low productivity and poor profits. Job satisfaction for the individual comes second. They see job enrichment as reaffirming management control - a palliative for an alienated workforce. Scientific management still prevails yet management today is more aware of the need to obtain work-force commitment and trust.
Payment Systems.
Pay is as an incentive to participate in the production process. It also is a control device. Hours, skill, effort and commitment are bought - a significant cost which management must control. Organisations still search for effective means of motivation and control via different payment systems.
In manufacturing payment by results (PBR) was common - often flat rates of pay supplemented by bonuses linked to individual or group output. PBR directly links more pay to increased output subject to quality, wastage rules etc. PBR have most use where workers (individual or group) can control the pace of work and where personal involvement with work is limited pay being the main motivator. PBR schemes remain persistent and popular. There is a blue collar (employee) culture which emphasises the importance of pay incentives - there is a lack of trust amongst production managers (Theory X - after McGregor ) who frequently believe that pay and direct managerial control is the only real motivator.
Sales commission is a form of PBR. The crudest form of PBR is piecework - payment only for work completed (applies to dentists and barristers).
Exercise
Why should PBR be acceptable to barristers and dentists but be alienating and oppressive to machinists or farm workers?
Pay as a factor in controlling and influencing production operations is recognised by those seeking to change organisational culture and obtain greater employee commitment. Profit-sharing whereby a slice of pre-tax profits is distributed amongst staff is popular as are share bonus and option schemes (encouraged by government!).
Profit-sharing is little seen in Britain - the John Lewis Partnership and Boots do it - but the relationship between individual effort and final profit bonus is remote. The bonus is nice to get especially if it comes before Christmas. But if bonus is down due to profits being down there is little the individual who has work hard can do about it except grumble! In share related schemes many staff just sell their shares for cash possibly being distrustful of the rises and falls of the stock market.
Management see profit sharing as an ineffective control device. In many large companies (and now the Civil Service )where commitment and merit are to be encouraged staff receive a annual merit increase based directly on their performance contribution as judged by their boss.
Cultural Influences & Production
In the UK it could be argued that we have neglected production as a core sector subsequently losing in world trade terms to Germany, Japan, Korea. Rolls Royce died and was reborn in the 1970's. Germany is successful in terms of its "versprungdurtecnik", its engineering technology, planning systems and education and technical training. Japan has dealt us many lessons. Why?
Exercise In the late 20th century "manufacturing is alien to the spirit and character of the English economy and people."Consider evidence from your own observation and experience to decide whether this statement is broadly true today (or otherwise). What is the case for and against this view?
Japan Experience and Quality.
Japanese economic and export success stems from well-planned and executed methods of production management in manufacture
- attention to detail and importance given to quality control
- total integrated production systems from delivery of materials/parts to final distribution
.....all supported by a labour system emphasising total flexibility, organisational identification and absence of job descriptions (notwithstanding the strict social rituals and processes of Japanese society).
Two aspects of Japanese production methods may be considered
JIT has substantial implications for production in terms of information management, use of computer systems, relationships with supliers and the requirements for staff morale and expertise and is briefly explained in the section below on stock control.
Total Quality Ideas had origins in the USA but were put into effect with supreme results in Japan.
One aspect only of total quality management is the adoption in operations areas of of qualty circles - small groups of supervisor-led staff who review job problems - improving production efficiencies and product quality. They have the authority to implement change.
The lack of supervisory expertise (technically and interpersonally) and authority delegated from management are reasons why the success of such participative approaches has been patchy in the UK. Firms introducing QCs discovered the educational, social skill and attitudinal demands of such methods. QCs that failed generally did in circumstances of fire-fighting, underinvestment, mistrust and scepticism between workers and management. QCs in Japan proper in cooperative workplaceswhere there is an underlying ethos about quality - quality as the responsibility of all members of the firm.
© Developed and maintained by Chris Jarvis
